shannonwatch's blog

Valentine's Day was marked at Shannon Airport by a vigil calling for Love not War. Around 25 people gathered in the sunshine outside the airport entrance, displaying black hearts and calling for an end to the U.S. military use of Shannon. Demonstrators ended the hour long vigil by giving their black heart 'Valentine Cards' to the Gardai who stood behind the metal barriers which they had erected to block access to the airport.

Every day the war machines roll through Shannon, as the innocent populations of Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere suffer the brutal consequences of neo-liberal occupation. The Gardai react by mounting public displays of strength against half a dozen innocent protestors, while claiming to have no opinions or authority over the cargos and personnel passing through the airport.

On 4 November an Italian judge convicted 23 CIA agents and two Italian agents for their role in the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric. Milan judge Oscar Magi sentenced former Milan CIA station chief Bob Seldon Lady to 8 years in prison, and 22 other agents to 5 years for their role in the abduction of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar. Italian Air Force Colonel Joseph Romano , who was responsible for the CIA kidnapping team’s flight to Egypt from a U.S. air base in Italy was also convicted.

The Wall Street Journal of Nov 5th called the decision "a landmark ruling on the controversial [illegal] U.S. practice of abducting [kidnapping] suspected terrorists and flying them to other countries for interrogation [torture]".

On Sunday 9th Nov, a group of 15 peace activists marked the World March for Peace and Non-Violence at Shannon by marching from the Town Centre to the airport entrance. At the same time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, head of a state that stands accused of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, sat on the airport tarmac as his plane was being refuelled. And in between, up to 20 Gardai blocked the peace marchers from getting within a mile of the airport terminal.

There was a busy weekend of activism at Shannon on 26th and 27th September (2009). A women's peace group spent 24 hours at the airport engaged in a KNIT-IN for Peace, and keeping a close watch on the transit of the warplanes through the airport. Separately, three men in a boat launched Peace and anti-Lisbon signs on a raft in the Shannon Estuary Lagoon in front of the airport. All the while the airport seemed more like a military base that a civilian airport.